Various Artists - Do The Strum! Joe Meek's Girl Groups and Pop Chanteuses (1960-1966)

Do The Strum! Joe Meek's Girl Groups and Pop Chanteuses (1960-1966) is the fifth and latest release in Cherry Red Records outstanding Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes series.  Unlike the previous collections, all of which focused on a specific artist, this one focuses on female vocalists and girl groups.  Over the course of three discs there are eighty-eight songs that include every known A and B side, tracks from the film Live It Up!, demos, alternate cuts and more.  While there are a few exceptions, most notably Glenda Collins (check out her great Tea Chest Tapes collection Baby It Hurts: The Holloway Road Sessions) Meek didn’t work much with female vocalists, so most of them recorded a couple of songs with him before he moved on.  

Alongside Collins, who is heavily represented with sixteen tracks, there are twenty-three vocalists or female led bands including the more prolific (Billie Davis, The Honeycombs, Eve Boswell, Gunilla Thorn and Valerie Masters), a few that had just a handful of singles (The Cameos, Judy Cannon), others that only had a song or two (Yolanda, Carol Jones, Pat Reader, Jenny Moss, The Sharades, Kim Roberts, Flip and the Datelines, Diane and the Javelines, Gerry Harlow, The Halos, Lea and Chess, June Harris, Denise Scott and the Soundsmen and Pamela Blue), and even a couple tracks where the artist remains unknown.  There is plenty of diversity throughout the three discs, with everything from beat, folk, soul, R&B, exotica, pop, death discs, garage rock and more, and as always, Meek’s distinctive creativity in the studio is in full effect.  With almost half the tracks previously unreleased this is another treasure trove from the Tea Chest Tapes that is well worth your time.  

(Cherry Red Records